Why read Before We Were Trans?

Book cover of Before We Were Trans: A New History of Gender

Book description

Agroundbreakingglobal history of gender nonconformity

Today’s narratives about trans people tend to feature individuals with stable gender identities that fit neatly into the categories of male or female. Those stories, while important, fail to account for the complex realities of many trans people’s lives.

Before We Were Transilluminates the…

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Why read it?

1 author picked Before We Were Trans as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Marcus McCann

Author

I was mesmerized by this book, and I read it in one great big gulp.

It tackles one of the most intractable questions that queer and trans people face: what to make of historical figures who lived their lives before they had the tidy identitarian categories we have now? I appreciate that Heyam is able to live with some of the inherent ambiguities of their project, and to some extent leaves the question open to further discussion and debate.

After I finished the book, the stories Heyam tells continued to rumble around in my head.

From Marcus' list on The best new writing on sex and sexual politics.